


Light

by FilmEater



Category: Actor RPF, British Actor RPF, Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-02-07 13:55:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1901538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FilmEater/pseuds/FilmEater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tired and depressed from what his life has turned to, Tom decides that he's had enough. But she could feel him, and she's waiting. She won't let him jump.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. October

It was never truly dark in the city. Street lights, car lights, lights from the windows of nearby houses and flats – they drowned out the starlight, the moonlight, and flooded the city with artificial light. It was dim, yellowish, or bright neon blue and white and red and orange. It came swiftly blinding, then disappeared just as quickly, leaving behind a trail of red and the sound of an engine getting further and further away.

She’d learned when she was little that some lights you could see, and some lights you could _feel_. And she could feel him coming closer at a measured pace. Not hurrying, not stalling. Determined. Purposeful. With each step he took, he grew dimmer, but with each step he took he was getting closer and so she felt him nonetheless. So she waited, looking over the spiked railing of the bridge down at the road. It was mostly empty this time of night, but never truly empty. Not in London. Like all big cities, London never truly slept. The lights always shone, there was always some level of noise, some degree of movement. She loathed big cities. But she came anyway. A moth to a flame. And just in time, too.

He treaded lightly on the ground, his footsteps barely heard on the pavement, tapping lightly until they stopped somewhere behind her, on the other side of the road. She didn’t need to look to know exactly where he stood. She waited. He waited. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t a last-moment attempt to change his own mind, to talk himself out of it. It was just waiting for the right moment. She turned, crossed the street, stood right next to him. He had put his coat over the spiked railing and was leaning on it. They had put up the spikes after too many people jumped off. It didn’t seem like they’d hinder him much. She wrapped small hands around two of the spikes.

“It’s not gonna kill you,” she said, looking straight down. It wasn’t very high, but the pavement was hard below the bridge. It would kill some, but it won’t kill him.

He turned to her but said nothing. She looked up, curious to see his face. Her eyes widened with recognition. What the hell was he doing here?! But she knew. Of course she knew. Him being there was the reason she was there. And it didn’t matter who he was.

“Go home,” he said quietly.

“I can’t,” her fingers tightened around the spikes. He wouldn’t understand. No one would understand. “Not while you’re here.”

“I won’t be here long.” He turned away, looked straight ahead.

“That’s exactly the problem,” she mumbled, but wasn’t sure whether he’d heard her or not. She could feel it, standing this close to him. Could feel everything that’s brought him to this place, to this moment. Everything that was making him fade away. It wrapped a fist around her heart and shoved it up into her throat, making it hard to breathe. It welled behind her eyes and started leaking out slowly, one drop at a time. She could feel it, but she couldn’t take it away.

He moved and her hand shot out, latched onto his wrist as if onto life itself. In a way, that was exactly what she was doing. “Don’t,” she said.

“Go away,” he said again, just as quietly as before. He tried to shake her hand off but couldn’t.

“Tom, please,” he flinched when she said his name. He knew that she’d recognized him the moment she looked at him, but he flinched nonetheless. As if until she had said it out loud, it wasn’t real. “It won’t kill you,” she repeated. But it would turn off the light, and that just might kill her. She blinked and another tear rolled down her cheek. She reached with the back of her free hand and brushed her cheeks, drying them with the edge of a sleeve.  

He seemed to give up on trying to untangle himself from her grip, and relaxed his arm back on the coat-covered spiked railing. “You don’t know that,” he said.

“I do.”

“How?”

She shrugged. “I just do. You’ll get really hurt, but it won’t kill you,” she said. “It might kill others, though,” she added. A light so bright going off, it would create a ripple turned wave turned tsunami. She’d be the first, but not the last. Most people didn’t even realize how much they needed someone to _be_ , even if it’s someone they’d never met, never seen, never knew of. But not realizing didn’t save them from the ripples, it just confused them because their world turned darker and they couldn’t ever figure out why.

“You’re insane,” he said, but there was no real feeling behind the words, no passion, no conviction.

“You’re the one that wants to jump off.”

“You don’t know what I want,” Tom tried to shake her hand off again, briefly, but she had none of it. If the hand was the only thing that kept him on that side of the bridge, she wasn’t ever letting go.

“I know exactly what you want,” she answered. “That’s why I waited for you,” he turned to look at her again, a storm of grey clouds studying her from high above. “You can’t always get what you want,” she added, blinked a tear away and tried for a little smile, “but sometimes you can get what you need.”

He laughed, a bitter sound that sounded nothing like it should have, “And you’re what I need then?” the words stung more than they should have, the tone stabbed, and it showed on her face because his expression softened a moment later and he said, “I’m sorry.” For a moment right before he said those words, he shone just a hair brighter.

“You shone like a beacon in a dark world,” she said, quoting without even remembering where from. It was an accurate description, it stuck in her mind. She was looking right up into the storm behind his eyes. “I felt you from half the world away. I could close my eyes and point to your exact direction. Like the northern star,” she looked away then, down at the scarce traffic below. He followed her gaze, said nothing. “And then you started fading, and I knew.” She added. “I didn’t know why, but I knew. So I came here to stop you. Because even if you don’t die, you’ll never shine like that again. You’ll never shine again at all. A body can stay alive without a soul, you know.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

She sighed, “Nothing,” she said. “You wouldn’t understand,” she added. “The point is you can’t jump.”

“I’m so, so tired,” he said, slumping against the railing. The spikes stabbed through the coat and he straightened up immediately, rubbing at his arms. She let go the hand that was holding his wrist to allow him more movement, and rubbed her own arm. He looked at her curiously when he realized she was mirroring him. She stopped, forced her arms down to hang beside her body.

“I know,” she said. Tired wasn’t an apt word for it. He was bone-weary. She reached and wrapped her hand around his. “Come,” she tugged at his arm, “tell me all about it.”

Down the street there was a park. He followed her numbly, his hand still in hers, as she led the way to the nearest entrance. It was closed this time of night. She looked around, then up at the fence. “What do you think?” she asked, looking back and up at him. “You think we can do it?” She knew he could. His legs were long enough. She, on the other hand, might not make it.

Tom nodded, still slightly dumbstruck. She motioned and he climbed over the fence, then helped her do the same, catching her when she nearly fell. He had an arm around her waist, another holding onto her own arm. Heat radiated from him, together with the faint smell of soap and fabric softener. She closed her eyes for a moment, savoring neither the heat nor the smell, but the flash of light. It faded a moment later and he let her go, stepping away. He followed her in silence deep inside the park. Life moved around them, rodents and foxes and insects, rustling leaves. Even there, surrounded by nature, there was no quiet. But there were no artificial lights as well. The lamps were there, but they were off.

“Slow down,” the first words he’d said since they left the bridge. “I can barely see a thing.”

“I can see,” she said and took his hand in hers again. She slowed down however. “Trust me.”

“I don’t know you,” Tom said.

“You don’t need to know someone to trust them,” she said, slowing down to a stop near a bench. “Besides, we’re here,” she motioned and he sat down.

“How did you get me to follow you here?” he asked as she sat next to him. “I didn’t mean to walk off that bridge.”

She shrugged, “I didn’t mean for you to jump off that bridge. I won,” he couldn’t see her smile in the darkness. It didn’t last long anyway, winning a battle wasn’t winning the war, and even wars had a tendency to repeat themselves too often for comfort.

“I hope you’re not expecting gratitude,” he said.

“None.”

“Good,” he nodded, “What’s your name?”

“Anna,” she said. “Now talk,” she found his hand in the darkness, wrapped her fingers around two of his and waited. Eventually, he started talking. He talked about how he was tired. About how he was tired of people constantly wanting things from him, expecting things from him. About how he was tired of being _Tom Hiddleston_ , instead of just being Tom Hiddleston. About how people were constantly trying to use him now, to get this or that or just a taste of what it’s like to be him or near him. About how the world was falling apart and he couldn’t do a damn thing to fix it, to help. About how people had the potential to be wonderful, amazing, fantastic, extraordinary, but they chose not to. He talked and talked, pausing only for air or to swallow against the dryness of his throat from all the talking, and then he talked some more. All the while, Anna’s fingers were wrapped around his. She listened. She couldn’t take his pain away, but she shared it with him. He talked and talked, and she could see, through the blur of unshed tears in her eyes, the weight lifting off his shoulders. He sat up a bit straighter, he breathed a bit easier. He talked, and she could feel the light growing brighter once again. People forgot. They forgot that sometimes all they needed was to talk and have someone listen. Just that. But they had to _really_ talk, and someone had to _really_ listen. Both skills rare in the technological word where talking was just sounds to fill the silence, and listening was just nodding your head waiting for your own turn to say something, anything, just to be heard and validated.

Eventually Tom stopped talking. They sat in silence. She could hear him breathe. Could feel the heat radiating from him in waves. Wondered whether she felt it so strongly because she herself had grown cold, her fingers frozen, now tucked into his large, warm hand. It took a toll, even if it seemed she’d done nothing but sit there and listen. Listening was easy. _Sharing_ took a toll. But he shone again. Not as bright, not nearly as bright, but it was there, as warm on her mind as his hand was on her skin.

“You’re cold,” he said into the silence.

“I know.”

“What did you do?” he asked. “How did you do it?”

It made her smile that he felt it, that he knew it was her and not just _something_.

“I listened,” Anna said.

“That’s all?”

She shook her head, “It’s hard to explain.”

He looked at her for a long time, his eyes that have adjusted to the darkness, pupils wide and dark, still strained to see her properly. She held his gaze for as long as she could, as long as she dared, before she looked away, eyes focusing on the neckline of his sweater instead. Some things were easy. There was an intimacy to listening, to sharing, to knowing what others felt. But being looked at like that put her on the other side. She was the naked one. And she was so very, very cold.

Tom chuckled, his chest shaking with the motion, the sound going slightly over her head. She looked up and he caught her, held, his eyes a prison. Trapped with a chuckle. “You talk a man off a bridge, listen for god knows how long while he talks, but run away the moment he looks at you.”

“I’m sitting right here,” her eyes ran wild around his face, escaping their prison when he blinked. She knew it, the same way she’d known him before she met him tonight, but it was different now, the same way he was different now that she’d actually knew him. Knew more of him than most, she’d guess.

“You know what I mean,” he said. She nodded. Of course she knew what he meant. “Why?” he asked.

“It’s easier to talk a man off a bridge,” Anna said. “You look at me like that and I’m naked,” she added. “And I’m cold enough without it.”

“Come,” Tom said, tugging her until she got up. He wrapped his coat around her, led the way out of the park. He walked slowly, struggling to see in the darkness, and sometimes he’d follow her direction. They reached the same gate they came in through and he helped her go over to the other side, then followed her. He took her hand in his, large fingers wrapping almost completely around her small hand, and led the way. He was growing brighter with each step. Soon, he’d shine again. Bright like the sun. Soon. He was growing brighter and she was getting colder. He led her up one street, then turned and up another, then turned again. She knew where he was going, knew they’d be there soon.

It was cold inside his flat. He’d turned to heating off before he left. He turned it back on the moment they stepped through the door. He made tea while Anna sat, shivering inside his coat. She wrapped her fingers around the hot mug he presented her a few minutes later and drank slowly, the hot liquid warming a path down her throat and into her stomach. The heat didn’t catch. She was still shivering.

“Why are you so cold?” he asked.

Anna just shook her head, finishing the last of the tea. She stood up with the mug in her hand, lost for a moment. Did she put it in the sink? Did she leave it on the coffee table? He took the mug away, warm fingers brushing cold ones, and placed it on the coffee table next to them.

“Tell me,” Tom insisted. She shook her head once again. Some things were better left unsaid, unexplained. Even if they were simple.

His hands cupped her face and she closed her eyes. He was warmth and light against her skin. She leaned into it, into the warmth, into the growing light. She could feel his lips curve into a little smile without opening her eyes. Could feel him moving closer, until there wasn’t anywhere closer to move. It was still a surprise when his lips brushed against hers. It was a brief kiss, but it left her tingling. She held her breath, opened her eyes. He was waiting to capture her, and there was nowhere to run. Fingers brushed against her lips gently and his smile grew a bit wider, “that seemed to warm you up a bit,” Tom said, eyes twinkling. Anna nodded.

“Come,” he said, his hands left her face, slid down her neck and into his coat, pushed it off her shoulders. “You don’t need this,” it fell to the floor. He left it there. He took her hand again and pulled her after him into the bedroom.

Anna looked around, heart hammering in her chest. It was just a room. There was nothing special about it other than being _his_ room. The bed was just a bed, large and soft and, she imagined, warm when he was there. Not so warm now, empty in the still-chilled room. She was shaking, the cold seeping into her bones, the brief warmth of his kiss already faded. Her heart was beating so hard she was sure he could hear it.

He couldn’t, but one look at her face and he paused, “Are you scared?” he asked. Anna nodded. “Is this your first time?” his eyebrows shot up in surprise. She shook her head. He relaxed a bit. “Then why?” she just shrugged.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” he asked, a smile playing on the corners of his lips again. He was standing close again. So close. Not close enough. There couldn’t be close enough with him. Too close wasn’t even an option.

“No, not much,” Anna agreed. There were other ways to communicate. And she was more of a listener anyway. She reached for his hand, pressed his palm just above her breast. Looked up at him. Her heart hammered against her ribcage, vibrating through her skin, through her jumper and right into his palm. He slid his hand up, up her long neck, to cradle the back of her head, and leaned down, tracing kisses down her temple and to her ear, “Shhh,” he whispered, his breath making her shiver.

She was still shaking, frozen, when Tom pulled the jumper over her head and tugged her trousers down. She stood, mostly naked, her skin covered in goose bumps, hands wrapped around herself, and watched as he undressed. He didn’t waste any time, and had her under the blankets within minutes. She burrowed into his warmth. He kissed her lips, her skin, his hands tracing paths up and down her body. He rid her of her undergarments and she didn’t mind. This was an entirely different kind of naked, and she wasn’t so cold anymore. And then he filled her, stretching, tugging, and she hissed from the pain, fingernails digging into the skin of his shoulders, but she wasn’t cold at all. He waited for a few moments, allowing her to adjust, and started moving. The room was warm, the sheets were warm, there was a sheen of sweat on his skin and she was starting to develop one to match. He was so hot, his skin burning against her, and wherever it touched her, she grew hot, too. He whispered her name, bit into her shoulder. Enough to leave a mark, not enough to break the skin. Anna barely even felt it.

In the early hours of dawn, he slept with an arm draped around her. She lay still, counting his breaths, wondering whether anyone else could feel it. A beacon of light in a dark world. This close to him, the world didn’t seem quite as dark. She wished she could stay longer.


	2. February

Hospitals were never quiet. There were always beeps of monitors, swooshes of ventilators, squeaking of wheels, tapping of feet. And those were the more pleasant sounds. There were also the screams, the moans, the cries. Hospitals were never quiet, but the little room in the children’s ward was as quiet as they got. Here, there was a steady beep, muted to near silence, the sound of the ragged breathing of a small child, barely older than a year, and the quiet melody Anna hummed as she held the little girl, pacing around the room with her, skillfully avoiding getting tangled in the wires connected to the girl.

The door was open, but nobody glanced into the room twice. They were used to Bella’s ‘aunt’. They didn’t question where the aunt came from, why she was never there at the same time as Bella’s own mother, or how she’d also been the aunt of three other children in the ward in the past month alone. People hardly ever asked questions about Anna, she had a tendency to go under the radar. Those who actually paused took one long look at her, nodded and left, not sure themselves what made them pause in the first place. She was a natural part of the scenery. To be passed by. To be left alone. It was just the way she liked it.

Anna’s arms ached from the weight of the little girl but she ignored it, kept pacing around the room, singing an old Elton John song quietly. Bella was barely breathing, but her breath was steadily getting stronger. When Anna had first found her two nights ago, she’d been connected to tubes and machines. Now she was breathing on her own, pulsing with the light of years of potential. Children’s wards were always the worst. And the best. So much light, so much potential. They could save the world, these babies. Save it, or wreck it, it was at their fingertips, at their little feet. She’d spent countless days and nights walking the hallways, sitting by their beds, cradling them in her arms. Children were resilient. They fought. They never gave up, not ever. All she had to do was give them a little push.

Bella needed more than a little push. Bella needed more than Anna could give, but she gave it anyway. She didn’t know whether the little girl would grow to be a dancer, a doctor, a bus driver. She didn’t know and it didn’t matter. She knew the girl had to grow up. It was essential. She had to make it through. So Anna held her, rocking lightly, walking back and forth through the small room, and sang. The baby’s breathing became stronger, steadier. Her skin picked up color. She slept. Anna walked back and forth, humming quietly. Her fingers grew cold first, then her toes, then it spread to the rest of her body. Slowly, ever so slowly, seeping through her skin and latching onto her bones. She laid the little girl down in her bed only when she was afraid she’d drop her if she tried to hold her any longer, sat down by the bed and traced fingers over the girl’s face, arms, hands, humming the same tune over and over again. Bella’s skin was hot to the touch, but Anna knew it was only because her own fingers were so cold. Night fell outside the window and blue eyes fluttered open, focusing on Anna. She breathed in relief.

It took the last of strength she didn’t even know she had, to walk out of the room and down to the nearest tube station. She sat, curled up on herself, barely listening to the announcement of the stations, and could hardly manage to get up and switch lines in time. The trek up escalators was the longest she’d had in a very long time. She half-walked, half-stumbled, hand often against the walls or window-shops, eyes sometimes closed, sometimes open. She didn’t need to see to know where she was going.

Anna tapped in the code for the gate, fingertips tracing a memory that wasn’t her own. She dug out the hidden spare-key the building kept nearby, unlocked the main door. She planned to put the key back but couldn’t muster the energy to move a single step away from her destination. She left the key in the lock. The elevator crawled down, the doors slid open then closed slower than a snail, then the elevator crawled back up. Anna walked, hand against the wall for balance, found the right door, knocked. He was there. Inside and a little to her right.

The door opened but he hadn’t moved. Instead, there was a woman. She was blonde and beautiful, but Anna registered none of it. She was a dark shadow. Her nose wrinkled distastefully and before Anna could open her mouth, the door closed again. She heard his voice inside, a question, but the words were unclear. An unfamiliar voice – hers – answered something shortly. She tried to take a deep breath but coughed on it, tried for another and reached up for the doorbell. Her finger stuck to it longer than was strictly necessary, more because of the effort to move than for the attention. The woman said something again, but he was coming closer. Closer. Relieved, Anna slid against the wall to a sitting position.

The door opened and there was a pause, then a quiet “Anna?” she looked up. Tom was the same as she remembered. No. He was better. Brighter. Even with the shadow in his flat, he was still brighter. He crouched and put his arms around her, lifting her easily, as if she weighed nothing. “Jesus, you’re frozen,” he muttered, holding her close. Her teeth were chattering. Her fingernails and lips a matching shade of blue that was entirely unnatural.

“Tom, what the fuck?” tight jeans and a tighter shirt floated into Anna’s line of vision. Above them, the blonde looked as disgusted as before. No. More than before.

His voice trailed over her head, quiet anger, “Did you just close the door on Anna?” she whimpered, borrowing into his chest, into his light. She couldn’t have him angry right now. He shifted, tilted his head to rub his cheek against her head. A gesture meant to comfort. It almost worked.

“You know her?”

“Of course I know her,” the world swirled when he moved and Anna closed her eyes against the motion, dizzy enough as it is. Tom placed her on a bed, on _his_ bed, leaning her against the headboard, hands wrapping around her frozen fingers for a moment before he started arranging the blankets around her, a quick kiss on her forehead burned through her skin and then he whispered, “I’ll be right back.”

Anna watched him leave, heard his quiet, “Get out.” Felt the ripples of his anger. For her. Because of her. She didn’t mean to cause trouble. There were words, hissed indignation from her, quiet anger from him. It didn’t last long, but the echoes, the ripples, were more than she could handle.

When Tom came back to the room he found her curled up in a fetal position, teeth chattering, eyes shut tight but failing to hold back the tears. “Hey…” he climbed on the bed next to her, the mattress shifting under his weight, pulled her close, curled up as she was, hands reaching underneath the blankets he piled on top of her, wrapping around her. “Don’t cry Anna,” he whispered. His fingers brushed her skin, lighting it on fire. Anna tried to crawl into him as much as possible. He was warmth and light, a sharp contrast to the darkness of the world and the cold of her own bones.

“What did you do?” fingers on her cheek, down under her chin, tilting her face up. Anna couldn’t focus on anything other than the heat, not even on his eyes. She closed her eyes and dropped her head into the crook of his neck. He was so hot against her cold forehead. Almost too hot to bear. Her hands were still cold, her teeth still chattering if she didn’t concentrate. She couldn’t concentrate on anything.

It wasn’t even a minute until he moved, getting up off the bed. Anna whimpered. No. He couldn’t go. Where was he going? He didn’t go, she could feel him right by the edge of the bed. If she reached out her hand, she’d be able to touch him.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Tom’s voice was muffled for a moment. She forced her eyes open. He’d taken his shirt off and was pushing his trousers down. A moment later he was back in the bed, his hands fumbling at her clothes under the blanket. He rid her of her jumper and the shirt underneath, got tangled trying to pull her fleece-lined leggings off. It was a strange affair because he tried to keep her under the blankets while undressing her. All the while, he was muttering to himself. Anna couldn’t catch a word of what he said, but there was barely any anger in it. “There,” he said, throwing the leggings on the floor. He got under the blanket and pulled her against his body, almost entirely on top of him. Her cold skin against his hot one. He hissed at the contact. Anna sighed. He wrapped her up in light and warmth, breathing into her hair, palms burning paths into her skin, heart beating steadily into her ear.

“I thought I’d imagined you,” he spoke into the air above her head, his hands never stopping, the sound vibrating through his chest and against her skin. “You were gone in the morning and I didn’t want it all to end anymore, and I thought I conjured you up on that bridge. Had a psychotic break or something. But here you are,” a hand went into her hair, fingers curling against her scalp. If she were in any condition, she’d purr. The best she could come up with now was press closer to him. If it were possible, she’d crawl inside. He talked some more, the words floating over her, coming sometimes as if from under water. She couldn’t find it in her to focus on what he was saying, but his voice in itself was a balm, settling over her skin in the places where his hands left a trail of warmth, sealing the warmth into the skin. She floated away from his voice and into darkness.

Anna woke up whimpering, disoriented.

“Anna?” hands tightened around her, hands she didn’t register at first. Warm hands, connected to the bright light pressed against her skin.

She looked up at a groggy Tom who half-sat, half-laid against the headboard of his bed, propped up on pillows in an awkward position. She was still cold, but she could think now, her teeth weren’t chattering. A glance at her hand on his chest – when did she put a hand on his chest? – showed that her fingers weren’t a shade of blue any longer. She opened her mouth to speak, realized her throat was too dry. Closed it back and swallowed once, twice, then tried again. “I’m sorry,” she said.

His brow furrowed in confusion, “What for?”

There was a bra hanging on the back of the chair in his room, a black lacy thing that she knew hugged the blonde’s breasts just the right way. She stared at it for a moment, then shook away the image of his hands over the lace-clad breasts. Tom followed her gaze, the look in his eyes not matching the memory. There was a twinge-turning-pain in his neck, another at the small of his back, from sitting in an awkward position while she slept. Anna reached a hand to his neck, fingers pressing against the spot, “Everything,” she answered. She brushed the sore spot on his neck, focused, watched the expression change on his face when he realized it disappeared. It made her smile. Then she winced, letting go of his neck and reaching for the exact same spot on her own, massaging the pain away.

“You didn’t need to do that,” his fingers brushed hers away, took over the gentle massage. He didn’t doubt that it was her. Didn’t question it. Just looked at her, mildly bewildered, as his fingers worked to loosen the tight knot. “Are you feeling better?” he wasn’t referring to her neck. Anna nodded. “Good,” he said. “What did you do?”

“There was a baby,” she said. He almost had the knot loose. She shifted, allowing him better reach.

“What did you do?” he asked again.

“I sang to her,” Anna answered. It was as close to the truth as she could explain.

“Is she okay?”

Anna nodded.

“Are _you_ okay?” he caught her again when she looked up, trapped in a cage of grey this time. It was a cage of blue last time, she remembered.

Anna nodded again, “Thank you.”

He kept massaging her neck lightly even when there were no more knots to loosen. She closed her eyes, rested against him. She was still cold, he was still the warmest thing in the universe. Or at least, the warmest she’d ever come across, she’d ever felt. “Why me?” he asked, his breath warm against the top of her head. Anna shrugged. “That’s not an answer,” he wasn’t angry, but he wasn’t happy either.

“You shine like the sun,” Anna said.

“You said something like that before. What does it mean?”

“It means,” she took a breath, tried to find an explanation he’d understand. Wondered if it even existed. “It means you make me warm when I’m cold.”

“Do you get cold a lot?” Anna nodded. “But you never came before,” he said. She nodded again. She never came before. “Why?”

“Too far,” it was a reason. There were others, but this one was as good as any of them.

“Will you stay?” his heart thumped a little faster, a little louder, when he asked the question. She placed a hand right over it, her skin pressing against the heat of his. She shook her head slowly. She couldn’t stay. “Just for a day or two?” he insisted. His palm rubbed up her side, pausing right below the side of her breast. Her bra was somewhere on the floor with the rest of her clothes. She shook her head again. It would just make it worse. “Just for tonight?” he tried.

“Okay.”

He sighed in relief, hands tightening around her, “Good,” Tom whispered, placing a kiss on the top of her head. It burned itself into her skull, etching right into her bones. She tilted her head up, calculated the distance to his mouth, followed the angle of his jaw, watched the way the dim light of street-lamps outside his window threw shadows on his stubble, made other parts of it shine.

“You’re still cold,” he stated, the corners of his mouth curving into a little smile, wrinkling his face in a beautiful way. Anna laughed. He rumbled from deep inside his chest, “Now that’s a nice sound,” he said. “Do it again.”

She stared at him and it was his turn to laugh at her expression.

“I bet I can make you do it again,” he said.

Anna nodded. Of course he could.


	3. April

Nature was humming a tune. It was one of her favorites. The rustling of leaves on the trees, the skittering of squirrels on branches, or mice on the ground; the flapping of goose wings, the quacking of ducks; water rushing over rocks, creating little waterfalls on their way; birds singing, chirping out of tune with each other yet still managing to produce an oddly pleasing harmony. Anna sat underneath a willow tree at the riverbank, back against the trunk, and idly played with tufts of grass.

Tom was coming.

His footsteps were the only sound that made no sense in the melody; crunching leaves, bending a path through the grass to where she was. How he’d found her was nothing short of a mystery to her, but he had, and now he was crouching and moving away the willow branches, stepping into her hiding place. She turned and looked up at the disturbance: he wore dark jeans and a light blue buttoned shirt, rolled up to his elbows, that was entirely inappropriate for all the nature. He smiled, pleased, when he looked at her.

“Hi,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. It made his shoulders stand out awkwardly.

“Hi,” Anna answered.

“May I sit?” he nodded towards the empty space next to her. Anna shrugged, which he took as an invitation. He settled on the ground next to her, entirely unconcerned by the tree-bark staining his shirt, by the grass dirtying his jeans.

It’s been months since she’d seen him last. He’d saved her then, whether he realized it or not. She left in the early hours of the morning, while he was fast asleep. She took with her a backpack he had discarded in the back of his closet and a jumper and a shirt he was about to throw away. She was wearing his shirt now. The sleeves were rolled almost half-way up to show her hands, the buttons undone, her old tank-top underneath. It was a good shirt, there was no reason to just throw it away if it could still be of use.

“How?” she asked him.

He rested his arms on his bent knees and turned to look at her. The sunshine that fell through the gaps in the leaves and branches danced on his face, making his curls shine. “I’m not sure,” Tom said, “I just thought… if you can find me, then I should be able to find you.”

Anna gaped. What he said was unheard of. Never done before. “That’s not possible.”

He laughed softly, “Yet here I am.”

“Here you are,” she agreed. His hand found hers on the ground, covered it completely, fingers wrapped around her own. They watched the swaying willow branches, the light dance on the surface of the water, the birds who came to hunt for food in the ground, and those who landed, curious, almost within reach of their hands. The birds blinked at them, once, twice, then flew away.

Tom sat very still as a squirrel made its way straight to Anna’s open hand. It sniffed around the fingers, darted back, then returned an instant later holding a mushroom in its front paws, climbed up the hand, up her arm and sat on her shoulder, eating the mushroom. He didn’t move, but Anna could feel the wonder, she turned to him and smiled, catching his eye. His fingers squeezed hers. The squirrel finished his meal and darted up the tree and out of sight. She heard Tom release a breath.

“Wow,” he whispered. Anna just smiled. Sitting here in her little hiding place, it was easy to forget how _disconnected_ almost everyone else had become. They were part of a huge network, connected to friends and strangers via the internet, connected to each other via mobile phones and laptops and newer, better gadgets. So connected, yet still alone, and the more connected to the virtual world they got, the more disconnected they became.

“Why?” Anna asked, looking at him again. He had a little stubble, there were bags under his eyes. Tired. He hasn’t been sleeping well. But he was still as bright as ever. She took a deep breath, basking in it.

“I missed you,” Tom answered.

“You don’t even know me,” she said.

A heartbeat. Something fluttered in the water just out of sight. A duck. A goose. It didn’t matter. “You don’t have to know someone to miss them.”

Anna sighed, leaned against him, head in the crook of his neck. It took some adjusting, but after a few moments they managed to settle in this new position. He had an arm around her now, resting on her waist, he reached the other and caught her hand again, wrapped it in his fingers, rested it against his chest. She closed her eyes. Hiding under the tree, wrapped in the arms of the warmest thing on earth. If she died that very moment, it would make little difference to her. “You can’t stay,” she had to force the words out, but couldn’t make herself speak in anything louder than a whisper.

“Why?”

“Moth to a flame,” she said.

“Which one are you?”

Anna shifted so he could see her roll her eyes. He chuckled, his chest shaking with the sound. She shook her head, turned back to her previous position. She could hear his heart beating steadily under the shirt, under his skin and muscles and bones. She could see the shadows of leaves dance on the ground to the music of the breeze.

“I think you’re wrong,” he said into the air above her head. She waited, watched the dancing shadows. He spoke again after a while. “You’re not a moth. I’m not a flame.”

“Then what?” a beetle was crawling right by his leg. In a moment, it would crawl right on top. Anna watched it, concentrated, and the beetle changed course.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what you are,” his fingers were tapping against her waist. It was very distracting. “But I think you need me.” She could almost hear the second part of that sentence in the breeze. Almost.

The light changed color, from the bright yellow of high noon to the faded orange or early evening. Clouds blocked out the sun every once in a while, and when they did the breeze turned to wind. The willow danced in the wind, Tom’s fingers danced on her skin having found their way underneath her shirt, droplets of water from the rushing river danced in the air. Through it all, they sat in silence. Anna wanted to dance, too.

“Where are you staying?” he asked when the light was starting to fade.

“Here,” Anna said.

“How long have you been here?”

“Three days,”

“It’s going to rain,” he said. “Stay with me.” It was a statement, but he still waited, holding his breath, for her nod. She smiled when he exhaled. He stood up, stretching his muscles, reached a hand for her and pulled her up. She stopped short of crashing into his chest, his hand on her waist balancing her upright.

“I had a backpack just like that,” Tom commented, picking up her bag from the ground and slinging it over his shoulder.

“I know,” she said.

They’ve walked out into the path and started following it back into the town. It was quite a walk and they’d have to do part of it in the dark. Anna glanced up. In the dark and in the rain. She smiled.

“Close your eyes,” Anna said. He paused, looked at her. Confused. She waited until he did. “Count to ten, then point to where I am.” His brow furrowed. Still confused.

Tom started counting out loud, “One, two, three…” Anna circled him several times, stepping further and further away from him with each step, then stopped, standing behind him and off to the side a little. When he reached ten he stopped. She watched as he, still with eyes closed, turned his head this way and that, then turned and pointed directly at her.

He opened his eyes, saw her standing exactly where he was pointing, “Bloody hell…”

They continued walking, side by side, in silence. Maybe he was right. Maybe he wasn’t a flame, she wasn’t a moth. Maybe it was all something else entirely. What, though?

The rain caught them when the town was already in sight. Tom growled, hurrying his stride, taking wider steps. Anna laughed and had to half-jog half-skip to catch up with him. “It’s just rain,” she said. He only walked faster once he saw she’d caught up. It was making him angry. Why was the rain making him angry?

“Tom, stop,” she reached a hand, caught his arm. He stopped. “It’s just rain,” she said again, looking up, feeling it fall on her face.

“I know. Come on, we should hurry,” he turned back towards the town. Her hand was still holding his arm. She pulled, hard. He stopped again. “What?”

“Angry.” Anna said, “Why?” she stepped closer, reached a hand to straighten the lines on his forehead. His hair was soaked, water was flowing down in paths over his face, then dropping off his chin. His eyes softened when she touched him, the anger draining slightly. Angry for her. Worried for her. He shouldn’t be. Didn’t he know? Didn’t he figure it out yet? She shook her head slightly, smiled, “Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

The frown lines were back on his forehead. She reached up to smooth them again, “that,” she said. “I love the rain,” she added. She reached for his hand, put it on the small of her back, put her hand on his shoulder and took his other hand in her free one. He looked at her, blinking the water from his eyes, and frowned again when she started humming a tune. “Stop,” she ordered. “Dance.”

“You’re insane!” but he didn’t take his hands off her.

“Dance!”

So he did. Under the pouring rain, their clothes sticking to their bodies, soaked to the bone, they danced. The path they were dancing on turned to mud, sticking to their shoes, hindering their step, they danced anyway. They danced until Tom stopped frowning and was laughing instead. Anna joined him, and laughed as he spun her this way and that, splashing mud and water everywhere.

“You look like a drowned rat,” he stated when they stopped. It was a fairly accurate description she imagined. A mousy girl _should_ look like a drowned rat after dancing in the rain.

“Have you ever seen one?” she asked. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes shining in the darkness. He shook his head. “I have,” she said. A bucket full of water, and inside it, struggling for its life, a rat with its back broken from the trap that had caught it. She’d cried. Tom’s hand found hers and despite the wetness, despite the drop in temperature, his hand was warm against hers.

They left a wet trail through the small hotel on the way up to his room. Undressing, he commented on her shirt, laughed when she told him it was his. “It looks better on you,” he said. Anna knew it couldn’t be true, yet felt he actually meant the comment. Odd. The entire content of her backpack was also soaked. They spread it over the heaters in the room, then went in for a shower. She laughed at the absurdity of taking a shower, but followed him in regardless.

He scrubbed the dirt off her. Brushed it with his fingers off her face, scrubbed it with a loofa off the back of her neck, her knees, she’d shrieked and nearly fell when he touched her feet. He laughed, sat her down in the tub and took hold of her foot again. She shampooed her hair twice.

“There you are,” Tom smiled, his thumb tracing her cheekbone once she was scrubbed clean. “My turn now,” he said, handing her the sponge. It was a lot faster to wash him than it had been to wash her. He’d had a shower in the morning, after all, and he didn’t spend several days sleeping under a willow tree. It was all an excuse, of course. An excuse to touch her, an excuse to have her touch him. She put the sponge away. Touching was meant to be done with hands, with fingers, with skin and lips and tongue. She’d used them all.

He lifted her off her feet, pinned her against the wall, found his way into her in a sharp, hard motion. Anna hissed and he stilled, mumbling “Sorry,” against her skin. She took a breath, let it go, waited for the pain to pass. “Okay?” he asked. She nodded and he was moving again. It wasn’t long before she was moving with him. They found a rhythm, dancing to the sound of water hitting tiles, porcelain tub, skin, dancing to the sound of their own ragged breath. It was the most ancient dance of all, and she found it she enjoyed it with him more than with others before.

Maybe he was right.

“Please don’t disappear while I sleep,” Tom whispered into her hair. He had her wrapped in his arms, holding her tight. The soft bed felt strange, alien almost, but his body was just the right combination of hard and soft so Anna crawled and laid right on top of him. He didn’t seem to mind.

“Okay,” she agreed. He smiled. She didn’t need to see to know that he did. His body relaxed. He breathed in and out, in and out, then relaxed his arms around her and started tracing patterns on her back with his fingers.

“You’re so warm,” he mumbled. Anna pressed her fingers against his skin, studying the temperature difference. He was still warmer than her. But he was right. She was warm. She didn’t feel cold. Her hands and feet were warmer than she’d ever remembered them.

She listened to his heart try to beat its way out of his chest and closed her eyes, letting him burn odd patterns into the skin of her back. She tried to connect them into pictures, but they made no sense.

Maybe she wasn’t a moth. Maybe he wasn’t a flame. Maybe he was right.


	4. July

She navigated the maze of streets following her own private compass, a ray of light brighter than the sun, that only she could feel. It wasn’t long now. He wasn’t far. She went mostly unnoticed, but occasionally someone would stare at her as they pass her by, her long jumper making her stand out in the summer heat. Even here, July wasn’t the season to be wearing jumpers. The summer sun shone through a thin sheet of clouds, but it just wasn’t enough.

She didn’t take the most direct route. The most direct route would be blocked ahead. She turned into alleys and side-streets, until she found an unattended fence to slip through, and then she was on the other side. For a few minutes, nothing seemed different. Then she reached the line of parked trailers, and the people walking around weren’t just random pedestrians anymore. They had passes with their names hanging around their necks and a purpose. They were striding or running, carrying things, talking on the phone, barking instructions, taking instructions. It was a buzzing nest of bees. A film set. She didn’t stop walking, and they didn’t stop to notice her.

He was standing with his back to her, talking, gesturing with his arms. The girl in front of him seemed distressed, distraught. There were two cameras trained on them and everyone around them were quiet. Those who walked made sure to stay clear out of the range of cameras.

Tom stopped talking mid-sentence and turned to look at her, a smile spreading on his face.

That’s when they noticed her.

“Tom, what the-?” the voice of whoever spoke died as he realized Tom wasn’t paying any attention. He was walking towards her, his smile growing wider. When he reached her, he wrapped her in his arms, lifting her off the ground. Anna wrapped her arms around his neck, held him just as tight. He smelled like heaven. He felt like heaven. She exhaled a long, heavy breath, wrapping her arms even tighter around him.

He put her down eventually, brushing stray strands of hair away from her cheek, “Where have you been?”

“Middle East,” she said.

His eyes widened, “Shit, Anna-“

“I’m fine.”

“Tom!” he turned towards the person calling his name, “Your mic is on,” the man said. Tom just looked at him, eyebrow raised, until he skittered off somewhere then reappeared a moment later giving the thumbs-up signal.

Tom turned back to Anna, hand wrapped around her own, pulling her close again. His fingers were hot against her skin, the warmth spreading through her skin to her fingers, into her palm and to the back of her hand, up her arm. “You’re cold,” he said.

Anna shrugged, “I’m okay. I’ve been worse.”

“Your accent is different,” he noted. He continued when she said nothing. “You had a perfect London accent when I first met you,” he said, “and now it’s Canadian.” A question has occurred to him. She could see it in his eyes before he opened his mouth to speak, knew what it was before he even uttered a word, “Where are you from?”

Behind him, they were setting up for a different scene, ropes were being prepared on a roof, a mattress on the ground. Anna’s eyes followed the rope for the stuntman, found the mechanism operating it. Something wasn’t right. “The rope,” she said.

“What?”

“The rope is going to tear,” she motioned towards it with her chin and Tom turned to follow the direction, saw the rope.

“What are you talking about? It’s fine. They’ve checked it earlier.”

“It’s going to tear and that man is going to break his back,” he looked at the rope, looked at her. It wasn’t doubt, it was too late for that, they’ve skipped over that phase months ago. It was part bewilderment, part reassessment, part admiration. There were parts in that look she couldn’t quite place, and it was over before she had the opportunity to think about it longer.

“Wait here.”

He walked back towards the group of people – actors, crew, director – who stood watching them from an almost respectable distance. It took him just a few steps to reach them. She heard him talking but didn’t hear his words, knew they were arguing with him, felt his anger rise. She wrapped her hands around herself, shivering. They gave in after a few minutes, and someone went to check the rope once again.

Tom walked back to her, “they’re going to check it,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“I need to go back to filming,” he sighed. “Wait for me?” he asked. “I’ll get you something warm to drink meanwhile. You can rest in my trailer if you want,” he took her hand in his again, “don’t go away.”

“I just got here,” and boy, was it a long journey. A part of her wanted to sleep for a week. Another part argued that a month would be a better idea.

“Exactly.”

There was a loud bang and they both turned to look at a metal weight lying on the floor, the torn piece of rope swinging in the breeze. There was a pause while people looked first at the torn rope, then at Tom and Anna. He squeezed her hand and she smiled. No one was breaking their back today.

He got her a pass, got her a chair, had someone bring her a cup full of hot Earl Grey tea. She curled up on the chair with her knees to her chest and watch them continue the filming. When she finished her tea and they were nowhere near done, she slipped away, navigating a route to Tom’s trailer. She found it after a few minutes, the only thing setting it apart from the rest is a small label saying “T. Hiddleston” and the absolute knowledge she had that it was the right one. It wasn’t very big. There was a sofa, a small table, a tiny kitchen area with a mini-fridge, an electric kettle and everything needed for tea or coffee, and an equally small toilet/shower room.

Anna walked around the table and curled up on the sofa. She closed her eyes, breathed in and out and waited. In the darkness of her closed lids, images flashed. She shoved them away, but they kept coming back. At least they were mute. At least she couldn’t smell them from here. She breathed in and out and waited. Eventually sleep came.

A hand on her shoulder and a whisper of her name. Anna sat up, looking around wildly. She was in a small room and Tom was standing next to her, worried. His trailer. Right. She took a breath, exhaled.

“You okay?” he asked, sitting down beside her. Anna nodded, moving into his lap to curl up against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, rested his chin on top of her head and leaned back against the sofa. “Good,” he murmured. She shifted, pressed her lips against the crook of his neck. The warmth spread through her, heating her up inside like nothing else could. If he’d been there with her she could have done so much more. So much more before she had to leave. With the warmth came images. Other lips touching that same skin. Other women. A brunette, a redhead, another brunette. She shoved them away. They weren’t there. They wouldn’t be there again.

“I was lonely,” he said into her hair.

“I know.”

After a pause, “Let’s go home?”

Home was a hotel suite. It wasn’t very big. There was a kitchenette by the entrance, a small living room, a bedroom and a bathroom with a large tub. Tom’s things were thrown around, making it look a bit less like a hotel room. Anna headed straight to the shower. She scrubbed herself clean, washed her hair, braided it. It’s gotten long and her braid reached the small of her back. It was getting hard to look after. She’d need to cut it soon. She changed into a clean pair of underwear, put on one of her clean shirts. A long-sleeved black shift with a Metallica print, just long enough to cover her butt. Grey cotton tights, a pair of socks.

Tea was set up on the little kitchen when she walked out, and there were four sandwiches on a large plate in the middle. “Thank you,” she smiled and sat down to eat. Tom watched her eat, chewing through his own sandwiches in silence.

“Siberia,” Anna said, sipping her tea.

“Pardon?”

“That’s where I’m from.”

“You’re joking.”

Anna shook her head, “From a little village between Bierobijan and the Chinese border.”

“But…” he couldn’t quite decide which ‘but’ to present first.

“I lived with my _babushka_ ,” she said, putting the emphasis on the first syllable of the word, “but she died when I was fifteen. I left afterwards.” Her grandmother had been like Anna, or rather, Anna was like her grandmother. The elderly woman felt the light, too, and everyone in the village and around it knew to come to her for help if a child was sick, a bone was broken. They came and brought gifts. They came and brought food and clothes and money and everything they could and couldn’t spare in exchange for their loved ones. They came and drained her grandmother dry. Her grandmother could never feel Tom, however. Not like Anna could. He wasn’t a beacon to her. He was too far for her to even feel. Her grandmother’s beacon had been somewhere to the north. Anna would catch her looking in that direction sometimes, staring, when she was distracted.

“How long have you been travelling?”

“Nine years,” she saw him do the math, calculating. They finished the meal in silence. He washed the mugs and plate while Anna walked around the room, touching his discarded items. She ran her fingers over his closed laptop, picked up a jacket from the back of a chair, wrapped it around her shoulders for a moment, then put it back. In the bedroom, there was a paperback on the bedside table. She sat down at the edge of the mattress, picked it up and opened the first page.

“It’s not bad,” he said from the doorway.

She couldn’t sleep. He was pressed against her back, a hand thrown over her, sleeping. He hadn’t been sleeping well again. Neither had she. And she still couldn’t. She managed to, briefly, but woke up with a gasp at the sound of screeching tires somewhere on the street below. And now she couldn’t sleep again.

Anna slipped out of his grasp, out of bed, out of the bedroom and out of the suite. She took the elevator down to the abandoned lobby, earning a barely interested look from the receptionist on duty, and headed towards the piano in the back of the room. Her fingers caressed the keys for a moment before she started playing. One tune after another. First melodies, then songs. She sang softly, her voice barely loud enough to be heard by the receptionist across the room. Tom woke up and followed her downstairs. She felt him walk, then take the elevator again, then walk until he was standing behind her and a bit to the right, leaning against the wall.

“ _I did my best, it wasn’t much_ ,” she sang, her fingers dancing on the keys, her fingernails making quiet tapping sounds.

_“I couldn’t feel so I tried to touch,_

_I’ve told the truth I didn’t come to fool you,_

_And even though it all went wrong_

_I’ll stand before the Lord of Song,_

_With nothing on my tongue but hallelujah…_

_Hallelujah… hallelujah…”_

“Come back to bed, Anna,” his hands on her shoulders, his voice a caress.

“I can’t sleep.”

“I know. Come,” his hand slid down her shoulder, wrapped around her own, pulled her up against him. She let him lead her back up the elevator and into his suite, his room, his bed. She lay with her head on his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. He had a hand around her body, holding her close, another hand on the back of her head, fingers buried into her hair.

“Close your eyes,” he whispered, his palm was flat against her side, burning a hole through her skin. He’d rid her of her clothes, saying she was too cold to wear any. She didn’t argue. His body was warmer than anything she could wear, anyway. “You’re safe here,” he added, “I won’t let anything hurt you.” She knew he was lying. She knew he couldn’t possibly protect her from everything. Especially not her own memories. Her own mind. But she believed him.

She’s been travelling for almost a decade, with no place to call home. But here, in his bed, in his arms, if that wasn’t home, she didn’t know what is.


	5. August

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is kind of short and kind of pointless, but it's here nonetheless.

“Where are we going?” his hold on her hand tightened briefly and she looked up. Curious blue eyes shone above her, twinkling. In jeans and a white button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, he looked just like anyone else, even though he towered above most. There were only occasional double-takes as they passed people on the street. None of them were for Anna, who, despite discovering herself on the cover of a tabloid some weeks before, was still invisible for the most part.

“That way,” Anna nodded in the general direction of their destination. She felt him roll his eyes as he pulled her closer, letting her hand go and putting his arm around her shoulders instead.

The sky was changing color, blue to orange and purple and bursts of pink that caught the eye, reflecting on the clouds. She stared, looking up more than ahead of her. The city was all buildings blocking the horizon. The sky was still open, still endless. So she looked up.

“This way,” she turned into an alley, led the way to a back entrance, up some service steps.

“Anna?” Tom asked, his voice carried to her from a few steps below her. They were between the third and fourth floors. “Where are we going?”

He knew where they were already. It wasn’t so complicated to figure out. “Children’s ward.”

“This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for tonight,” he muttered, but followed her nonetheless.

“I know.”

It was all a bigger affair than she’d expected, once he was recognized. The nurses flocked to him more than the children, and a few of the doctors kept coming back to hover around him every once in a while as well. She sat on a cushion on the floor, her arms wrapped around a two-year-old boy named Noah, humming a nameless tune in his ear as she watched the commotion. Tom looked out of sorts at first, confused, not sure what exactly to do with himself. But it wasn’t long before he’d found his place, laughing with the children, posing for photographs, playing games. At some point he went off to visit all the bed-ridden kids who couldn’t come out to the playroom. While he did that, Anna did something she’d never done before, she stepped out to the nurses and talked. They blinked at her at first, as if seeing her for the first time, but within moments they were nodding in agreement, smiling. The playroom was set up for a dance party within twenty minutes – tables were moved to the sides, lined against the walls, balloons were produced from a drawer, filled and hung against the wall. Anna was standing on a table, holding sticky tape in her teeth and tearing out pieces to stick balloons to the wall, when Tom came in.

“What’s going on here?”

“We’re having a dance party,” she turned to smile at him. He had a little boy sitting on his shoulders. “Who’s your new friend?”

“This is Danny, he’s going to be a superhero when he grows up.”

“Yeah? Which one?”

“Superman!” the boy said, putting his hands up as if he were flying through the air. Anna smiled, turned back to the job at hand. The balloons weren’t going to hang themselves.

They dimmed the lights, hooked up Tom’s iPad to computer speakers someone produced from a nursing station on a different floor, and danced. It wasn’t a very loud party, there wasn’t any wild dancing, but they were laughing. Anna danced with Superman Danny, and watched as the room lit up, as everyone grew brighter, the children, the nurses, the doctors, even Tom himself. And all because of him. One man walks into the hospital and turns on the light.

She let Danny go and slipped out of the room, walked down the hall and into the last room on the right. Some people couldn’t come to dance, others just didn’t want to. The girl in the bed must have been fifteen or sixteen at most. She had the bluest eyes Anna has ever seen, and dyed black hair with almost an inch of blonde roots showing. Her fingernails were dyed, alternating black and blue, chipping at the edges. Her wrists were bandaged, and thin white scars were visible above the bandages, going up both arms to the insides of her elbows. Anna sat down on the empty chair by the bed, a gesture entirely unacknowledged by the teenage girl.

It was a long time before the girl looked at her. They sat, staring at each other in silence. The faint sounds of music from the playroom filled the room, interrupted by beeping monitors, clicking from an unknown source and the squeak of wheels in the hallway. Anna reached and touched the girl’s skin, right above the bandages, tracing first one thin white scar then another. These carried pain she couldn’t take away. This kind of pain had to be let go. But she did what she could, and after a few moments, although there were no visible marks, her wrists hurt, a faded, tingling, pulling pain that she couldn’t quite describe. Blue eyes looked at her in wonder.

Anna slid her hand down, wrapped her hand around the blue-and-black tipped fingers of the girl. There were no words spoken, but she listened. Sometimes, there was no need for any words. When the girl blinked away tears some time later, Anna said, “One day you’re going to save lives with your words and your music,” the girl was looking at her, clearly not impressed with the statement, “but before you can do that, you need to come and dance.”

It wasn’t quite as easy as that, of course, things like that never were. But eventually Anna had gotten her to get up and follow her down the hall. By that point, Anna was freezing, nails turning blue. The playroom was nearly empty, but a few kids were still there, dancing. Tom was standing against the wall, watching the doorway. He knew she was coming. He pushed himself away from the wall and walked to meet them. Anna moved away the moment he reached them, walking towards his iPad to change the song to something a little slower. She knew exactly what she was looking for. She’d put it there the previous day. She found it, pressed play, and the tune immediately changed, now playing the piano intro to the new song. She sat on the table, her legs dangling in the air, and watched Tom and the girl. He was talking to her, leaning down, holding her hand in his. After a moment, he pulled her to the middle of the room, wrapped his arms around her waist and started dancing. She followed him step for step, not missing a beat. He leaned to whisper in her ear and she smiled. Anna blinked and the girl was a candle, flickering light, growing brighter as they danced. She let out a breath, wrapped her hands around herself for warmth.

“I didn’t know I had that song on my playlist,” Tom said. The room was empty now, the door closed. The nurses, doctors and children all shut out on the other side, going about their business.

Anna shrugged, “I added it.”

“For this? For Eve?” he asked.

She nodded.

He reached for her, blinked when he came to contact with her skin. “You’re freezing.”

She shrugged again. He wrapped her in his arms. In a different world, that alone would be enough to banish all the cold from her bones.

“Come, I’ll take you home,” he took a step back from her, half-turned to the door.

“Dance with me,” she said.

Tom turned back. “There’s no more music,” he pointed out, but he put his arms around her waist nonetheless, and moved closer, their bodies pressed against each other. Anna reached and placed her hands lightly on his shoulders.

“You’ve got music,” she pointed out.

“They took the speakers already.”

She rolled her eyes, reached into his pocket and pulled out the iPad with the tangle of headphones connected to it. He had to take a half-step back to give her room to untangle the mess and plug it into the device. He leaned down so she could place one of the buds into his ear, and switched the device on while she was placing the other bud into her own. His eyes shot to hers when he heard the song. It wasn’t one of his. Anna just smiled.

It wasn’t the best song for dancing, but they danced to it anyway, swaying, pressed against each other. There weren’t any fancy twirls and turns. There were just the two of them, standing in the middle of the empty, darkened room, dancing to music only they could hear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Tom and Eve (the teenage girl) are dancing to is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5hRa_l9VAE


	6. November

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for violence and animal abuse.  
> Not proof-read. I basically just vomited words on the page. Sorry.

Another city. He had to go, he had no choice, and Anna had followed him. It just seemed like the thing to do at the time. Now, sitting on the beach, toes digging into cold sand, she concentrated on the waves kissing the shore rather than the cityscape behind her. She loathed big cities, and there had been just far too many of them in the past months. She itched to just get up and start walking away. She also itched to get up and walk straight towards where Tom was. He was somewhere behind her and to the left, far in the distance. Deep in the city. Buried in the concrete. If she closed her eyes and concentrated, she could almost see him, sitting in a small room, drinking water from a bottle and talking to people. He talked to a lot of people.

The wind from the ocean was sharp and cold, making a mess of the hair that has escaped the bun on the back of her head, sneaking in through the layers of her clothing, making her skin stand on edge. She was bundled in a coat she’d taken from Tom’s suitcase, but it didn’t help much against the wind. Nor did her bare feet, toes buried in the sand. The breeze has started up shortly before the sunset, and by the time the sun has sunk below the line of the water, it was a full blown wind. The sky was a blazing orange right at the horizon, reflecting in the water, turning steadily into a greenish-blue among dark grey clouds as she tilted her head up to look. It was going to rain soon. Anna took a deep breath, reveling in the fresh smell of the sea. She wasn’t far out of the city at all, but sitting with her back to it, breathing in the salty tang of the water rushing towards her then away, she could almost pretend it wasn’t there.

Just a little longer, and then she’d go back.

Anna waited until the last shade of orange faded from the sky, then sighed, stood up and turned toward the city, shoes in hand. She wasn’t entirely sure where she was, but that didn’t worry her at all. She had her own inner compass, pointing the way back to yet another hotel room they’d called home. Anna had both sharp and vague images of what a real home was like. The smell of apple-cakes in the air. Carpets on the walls. Her grandmother’s voice, singing softly as she kneaded bread on the kitchen table. The smell in her room, a mix of laundry detergent, wildflowers and that scent that was left after the carpet has been vacuumed. For years, there hasn’t really been a home. Not in that sense. There were places to sleep, places to eat, places to pass the time. But she was always moving, and they were always moving with her. Now, home seemed to be wherever Tom was, and so far it was defined by large, soft beds, bathtubs and scented soaps, and room service in the mornings. Sometimes, in the evenings as well.

The ground was cold and hard under her feet once she stepped off the sand and onto the paved street, but Anna didn’t put her shoes on. She walked carefully, at a measured pace, not entirely looking around, not entirely aware of where she was passing through. She knew where she was going.

And then she heard the sound.

It wasn’t human. She didn’t think anything human was capable of making a sound quite so tortured, a sound that expressed quite that much pain. She could almost feel it in her own bones. Anna stopped dead in her tracks, heart racing, the scenery around her snapping into sharp, painful focus. And then it came again, muted this time, but unmistakable. She turned and ran around the corner and into the alley.

There was a boy there. He wasn’t very large, no bigger than she was. He wasn’t very distinctive. He wasn’t what made the sound. But he was what had created it. He was crouching over something Anna couldn’t see, shoulders set, breathing heavily. There was a smell of something burning in the air. A smell like the one that filled the kitchen, back home, when her grandmother quickly put the plucked chicken over a flame to burn off any remaining feathers. She felt sick.

“Stop,” her voice was sharp and loud. Unusual. But he froze for a moment, then turned his head a fraction in her direction.

“Bitch, fuck off,” and turned right back to the thing on the floor. That sound again. Her blood froze in her veins, her heart thrummed so loud she couldn’t quite hear above the sound.

“STOP!” louder. Maybe someone would hear. Maybe someone would come. She took the few steps that separated them and jerked at his arm. He growled. There is no other word to describe that sound. He growled, and in one motion turned and stood up. Anna choked on the breath she was taking, pain shooting in hot flashes from her stomach and to her limbs.

“I said fuck off,” the boy said. He blinked, looked down, as if surprised to find hot, red liquid staining his hand. He stared at the point of contact between their bodies, where his knuckles were brushing her shirt, his knife buried deep into her stomach. “Crap,” he mumbled. “Shit,” he pulled the knife out and Anna gasped, hands immediately going to the hole in her body. She watched in horrified, pained, frozen fascination as the boy – he couldn’t be older than fifteen, she decided – used his shirt to wipe down the blade then threw it on the ground, pulled up the hood of his coat, zipped it up, then walked away in a calm, measured step.

Then the sound distracted her and she looked away, down on the thing on the ground, the thing he was crouching over. It was a cat. Underneath the blood, the burned off tail, the singed off ears, underneath the cuts that she could tell were shaped like something, although she couldn’t quite make out what – it was a cat. It was purring between heavy, ragged breaths.

Anna intended to sit down, but it was more like falling down next to the tortured, deformed little creature. The motion sent jolts of pain through her entire body. She tried to reach for it, but her limbs were heavy, every movement was pain, and she was growing very cold, very fast. She folded on the ground, head next to the cat’s, hands pressed tight against her middle, and wondered whether she had enough strength to make someone notice her. Then something vibrated in the pocket of her coat, and a tune started playing.

It took her far too long to fumble for the damned thing, trying to stay focused, to keep pressure. By the time she wrestled the little silver-colored thing it had stopped ringing. She pressed the digit for speed-dialing and held, the beating of her own heart growing louder in her ears, competing with the purring of the cat next to her. It was an effort to bring the phone to her ear. It rang once, then he picked up.

“Help me,” she managed, then the phone grew too heavy and she let it go. It was too much effort to bring her hand down to her stomach so she just let it fall on the ground, then pulled it closer with sheer force of will she didn’t realize she possessed, until she was touching the cat. She took as deep a breath as she could manage, closed her eyes, and started humming.

It was cold and dark, in the limbo of unconsciousness. It was cold and dark, but at least there was no pain. At first her body had shook, but then, that too had stopped, leaving behind a sort of relief, muscles unclenching, accepting their fate. The pain went first. Then the strain on her body. Then the cold. Then there was nothing except the darkness laying heavy around her, pressing down from all directions.

It lifted, briefly, in a flash of pain and light and noise, voices speaking to her, hands pulling at her, and then she was plunged into it once more. Different this time. The pain was vague, as if it was someone else’s, only a reflection, as she’d often felt before. The noise was muted, a sound coming from underwater. There was activity around her, about her, but it was all somewhere out there. Inside, inside her own skin, inside her own mind, she was swimming in tar, dark and sticky, seeping into her, slowing down her movements. It was pulling her down, and she had no strength to fight. When it won, the vagueness of the things that were happening Outside faded into nothingness once more.

It went on and on, drowning in tar, coming up for sharp, painful air, then drowning in tar once more. She didn’t know how long it lasted, but eventually, it had stopped.

She woke up.

She woke up quite suddenly, eyes flying open and mouth open, ready to scream. No sound came out, and she was glad for it.

“Oh thank god,” she turned towards the sound and found Tom, sitting at the side of her bed. His distress palpable in the air of the room. It pressed against her skin, making her heart flutter in panic. She squeezed his hand, wrapped around hers, and took a breath, trying to steady them both.

“It’s okay,” she croaked, her throat dry. Another breath and she closed her eyes, taking stock of her own body. She could feel all the tears inside of her, all the stitches, cuts and cauterizations that were holding her together. Could feel her heart straining to pump new blood into the healing flesh. She swallowed once, twice, then said, “I’ll be okay.” His head dropped to the space between her thigh and the edge of the bed like a sack of potatoes, bumping against her, and he took several very deep breaths, his shoulders shaking slightly. Anna disentangled her hand from his and lifted it, then rested it on top of his head, fingers in his hair. “Shhh….”

His scalp was warm against her cold palm. She let the warmth seep in, just a little, and then she fell asleep again.

When she woke up again, Tom was curled up at her side, pressed against her, shirtless, asleep. There was only one soft light in the room, and through the steady wheezes, beeps and buzzes, she could hear the quiet of the night. She tried moving, scooting to the edge of the bed, but found the movement to be too painful, too much effort.

“What…?” confused, his voice scratchy from sleep.

“Hi,” Anna whispered.

“Hi,” his face broke into a smile.

“That’s not comfortable,” she said, gesturing.

“No,” he agreed. “But you insisted, and I didn’t mind.”

“I… what?” now it was her own turn to be confused.

“You don’t remember?”

Anna shook her head. “I tried moving a bit, but…” she shrugged helplessly.

“It’s fine. I’m fine.” He was lying, but she let him. She didn’t want him to move. She didn’t remember making him climb into the bed with her, but she could imagine exactly why she’d done it. He was warm against her, and she wasn’t quite so cold anymore. She turned her head towards him, breathing in the scent of his sweat and fear, the scent of his skin and faded aftershave, burying her face in the crook underneath his chin. He shifted just slightly, pulling her closer, putting a careful arm around her. Anna closed her eyes, taking shallow, shaky breaths.

“Hey…” Tom said. “You’re okay… you’ll be fine. Don’t cry.”

It wasn’t until he said that that she’d actually started crying. And then, for the longest time, despite the pain stabbing every shake of her body, she couldn’t stop. It was dead. She couldn’t help it, and it died.


	7. December

“You shouldn’t be walking around.”

“I’m just standing.”

The balcony wasn’t very big, but it was up high, and over the roofs of the buildings around the hotel, she could almost see the sea. The wind was strong enough to carry the salty tang through the air, the molecules of salt settling against the bits of her skin that were exposed. Lighting flashed amid the dark grey sky, and she could feel Tom tense in the room behind her. He hasn’t stopped being tense since she’d woken up in the hospital, only varied in the degrees of his tension. Which, in turn, caused her various degrees of tension. She took a deep breath. This had to stop.

“Tom?”

“Hmm…?”

“Come here?"

Ceramics clinked against glass as he put down his mug of tea, then a rustle of pages as the script he’s been going over was discarded. A rustle of fabric and leather, barely audible steps on the carpet, then the swish of the glass door as he moved it to be able to go through, then closed it back to keep the cold air outside of the room. He leaned against the railing beside her, said nothing.

“Look,” Anna said, motioning towards the horizon. A heartbeat later lightning forked through the sky. His breath caught beside her. When the thunder followed a few seconds later, she could almost hear his heart skip a beat. There was so much noise, it vibrated through the tiled floors, the metal railings and through their bones.

“Will you come inside if I asked?” he asked once the rumble of angry clouds died down.

“Will you stay here with me?” she asked instead.

Tom sighed, “Would you at least sit down?”

Anna nodded, stepping back a couple of steps and sitting with her back against the wall. She had to concede something. It made his shoulders slump slightly, some of the tension leaving them. All of this was her doing. The pain in the muscle that connected his neck to his right shoulder, the tension in his forearms from holding his hands fisted without even noticing, the headache he’s been having on and off for days, the way he couldn’t concentrate properly on learning the script for his new role, all the interviews he’s been turning down, Luke _yelling_ , actually yelling at him over the phone the other night. It was all her fault. She should never have stayed in the first place. Should never have allowed him to convince her it was a good idea. Very evidently, it wasn’t.

“Stop it,” he said.

Anna blinked. “What?”

“I don’t know where your head is going right now, but wherever it is, fucking stop it right now.” He turned then, rigid, radiating anger. Another flash of lightning blinded her momentarily, and as she tried to focus, it seemed as if the thunder that followed immediately was coming straight from him, not from the atmosphere around them.

“What?” she repeated. And then, as it dawned on her, “Okay.” She patted the tile next to her, “Sit down.” He studied her for a moment, still fuming, then took a deep breath and moved. She took his hand in hers when he settled beside her, he was hot, as if his anger has actually raised his temperature. Likelier, though, it has cooled hers again. “Close your eyes,” she said. Tom looked at her, the blue in his eyes mixing with the grey all around them, a storm within a storm. Then one storm was gone, hidden. Anna lifted his hand to her neck, pressed two fingers against her pulse point and waited. She waited until his breathing slowed, until his shoulders relaxed, until his heartbeat synchronized with hers. Then she moved his hand, placing it under the sweater she was wearing, fingers pressed lightly against the red scar. He flinched, but she held his hand tight, not allowing him to take it away. Waited, once more, for his shoulders to relax. She took a breath and closed her own eyes, and followed the line of his fingertips, through mending skin, through mending tissue, to where a piece of her has been cut out, the rest of her sewed up around the gap. Through healthy tissue, pumping blood, flexing muscles. Everything was working.

“Do you see?” Anna whispered. He flattened his hand against her stomach in response, left a hot trail on her skin as the hand moved, circled her waist, settled on the small of her back and pulled her close. He pulled her onto his lap, wrapped both his arms around her.

“You can’t leave,” he said into her hair.

It had started raining. The drops fell at an angle, but mostly missed them as the balcony above theirs provided shelter. The tapping of the water around her, the beating of his heart against her back, the beating of her own inside her ribcage, created the background to the tune she started humming. She leaned her head back against his shoulder and closed her eyes, letting the music settle around them both.

“Anna,” it was an effort to open her eyes. She was cold again. Colder than she’d been in days. Once she did open her eyes, she saw her hands wrapped in his, knew her nails were a shade of purplish-blue. Tom was a blazing fire all around her. Brighter than sunshine, hotter than the sun. She half-turned in his arms, burrowed deeper into the heat. “Anna, the fuck did you do?”

“Mmm?” was all she managed. He growled deep in his chest. The world swirled around her as he stood her up, holding her up with one hand as he opened the balcony door with the other, then pushed her through gently and closed the door. The music of the rain faded considerably, and her heartbeat grew louder inside her skull. He picked her up then, an arm around her knees, another just under her shoulders, and the world danced a strange waltz as he carried her into the bedroom of the suite. Tom was angry with her, but the tension has left his body, the headache was gone. Anna smiled.

“You think this is funny?” he asked, dropping her on the bed somewhat less gently than he could have. She nodded, curling up into a tight ball against the sudden cold of his absence. “Well then I’m sure you’ll find this hilarious,” he said, then turned around and left the room.

This wasn’t the result she had in mind. In the next room, he had picked up the mug of now cold tea, spilled it into the sink, filled the kettle with tap water and turned it on. He was doing it on purpose. She had it coming. Anna rolled over, grabbing a corner of the blanket with her, wrapping it around herself as she tried to warm up. There were other, much better ways of warming up. Ways he’s been avoiding for weeks, for fear of hurting her. His skin pressed against hers, his hands travelling across her body, burning paths into her flesh. His mouth on that point just below her ear, sucking gently, making her heart race faster. The thoughts themselves weren’t enough to warm her up, but they were a blessed distraction. She closed her eyes and concentrated on memories of him. It was so consuming she almost missed the fact he was in the room again. The bed shifted as Tom sat down in front of her, and she opened her eyes. “What are you doing?” he was burning, but no longer angry. Anna shrugged, smiled. He was flushed, the blood so close to his skin she could see it pulsing with every beat of his heart. It was beating as fast as hers. She reached for his hand, placed it against her skin, guiding it up to her breast.

“Oh it’s like this, is it?” he asked, the corners of his mouth tugging upwards. Anna nodded. It was exactly like that. “You could’ve just asked, you know” fingers played lazily with her nipple, eyes travelled down her neck, settled on her exposed skin. She’d opened her mouth to speak, then just shrugged again. It was an effort to sit up, but she did, then pulled the hem of his sweater she’d been wearing over her head, dropped it beside her. He focused on her breasts, swallowed once, twice, then took his own shirt off. A moment later he had her pressed against the mattress, trapped underneath him, his body burning holes into hers. “You win,” he mumbled into her neck. She giggled, cold hands pressing against hot skin, pushing his sweatpants down his legs.

“You worry too much,” Anna said when her breathing slowed and she was warm once more.

“You got stabbed.” Tom was lying on his side, one hand supporting his head, the other tracing circles into her stomach, around the red mark on her skin.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“I’m not.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” his fingers paused, his brow lifted.

“Mmhmm,” she nodded, distracted by the motion of his tongue as he licked his lips. He moved, and a moment later his mouth was pressed to that spot just underneath her ear, making her shudder, making her skin stand on edge. An exact reenactment of her earlier thoughts, of the images in her head and the echoes of feeling against her skin. This was no echo, though. She curled around him, practically purring.

He chuckled against her skin, “Who knew…?”

“How do you do it?” Anna asked, fingers buried in his hair, gently scratching his scalp. It was his turn to purr.

“I don’t know. I thought you were doing it.”

“Oh.”

“You won’t leave?” he asked.

“Not now.” Anna said.

His heart fluttered in a panic so strong it caught her own, and she had to concentrate to separate the two. Breathe in, breathe out. She pressed a hand against his ribcage, over his heart, forcing her calm on him. Breathe in, breathe out. “Everyone goes,” she whispered. The words cut through them both.

“You can’t,” he said.

“Shhh…” she traced the lines in his forehead, brushed fingers gently down his cheekbones, down his nose, caressing the stubble on his chin. “There’s still time.” The question in his eyes practically burned her with its intensity. She could hear it clear in her mind without him even having to speak. In the background, there were other words, a cacophony of quiet sentences, warring with it each other, but the question was the only clear thing. How much time?

“All the time you need,” she whispered.

Tom thought of forever, but Anna knew there was no such thing.


	8. January

The reflection in the full-length mirror hardly looked like her at all. The girl in the mirror wore a mask of make-up, her hair has been cut and styled, she wore a brand new dress that exposed her collarbones and half of her back, and she was standing on high-heels. She was worried that if she moved, she would fall and the illusion would break. The girl in the mirror wasn’t Anna at all. At best, she was someone Anna could have been, had the world been different.

“You look lovely,” said the woman who’s been fussing over her for the better part of the past hour.

“I don’t like it,” Anna said. It probably wasn’t the right thing to say. The woman was hurt. She’d only been doing her job. It wasn’t her fault Anna didn’t feel like herself by the time the process was over. She’d done everything right – she did the hair and the make-up, painted her nails a shade of scarlet, picked a perfectly fitting dress. It was just that all of that was perfect for somebody else. “I’m sorry,” Anna said.

Fifteen minutes later, she was walking down the busy street in her jeans and an oversized sweater, hair still in a tangle from trying to get the pins out, face clean of all the make-up, scanning the shop windows for something, not even entirely sure what. She’d turned into a side street, then another, then she stopped dead at a small second-hand shop window when she saw the boots. They were cream colored, flat, and covered with a layer of lace. Anna stepped into the little shop, looking around. If they had shoes, they could have a dress somewhere. The lady behind the counter looked up from the book she’d been reading, then turned back to her reading. All the better. Anna browsed through the different clothes, hands sliding over the materials. She paused when she touched lace again, took the hanger off the pole and looked at the dress – it was the same cream as the shoes, short lace sleeves and a layer of lace covering a v-cut in the back of the dress, the rest was chiffon, airy and flowing down to her knees. She bought both the dress and boots without trying them on. They were just right.

There was more purpose to her step once she left the little shop. She knew exactly where she was going, even if she’d never been there before. It took no more than ten minutes to find the little hair salon. The little painted sign just said “Sveta’s”.

Sveta was a woman in her early forties. She had hair colored in a bright shade of red, perfectly manicured fingers, and the ability to fill a silence with one-sided conversation that Anna found very homely. Within minutes Anna was sitting in a chair, leaving her hair in the hands of someone else once more. Sveta chatted away, quickly switching to her native Russian, as she styled Anna’s hair in a thick, fancy Dutch braid, leaving strands of hair out of it every once in a while for a “romantic disarray” look, as she put it. Anna smiled. Her grandmother would say that, whenever she saw Anna with her hair in a mess. This time, it was probably truer than when her hair had been sticking in all directions, messed up from sleep. Once the hair was done, Sveta moved quickly removed the bright red nail polish from Anna’s fingers and replaced it with a pearly white shade.

They had an argument about make-up, but in the end, it was as Anna had wanted – barely there. Nude eye-shadow, mascara and a thin black line along her lash line; blush and lipstick just a shade darker than her own lips.

Anna’s phone rang when they were done, just sitting and talking.

“Where are you?” there was just enough panic in Tom’s voice to make her own heart skip a beat. She should have called. He’d come to pick her up and she wasn’t where she was supposed to be.

“I’m fine. I’m sorry,” she said. “I went someplace else. I’ll text you the address.”

She dressed in a hurry, in the bathroom of the salon, shoving her discarded clothes into the shopping bag that previously contained the pair of boots and the dress.

“ _Krasavitsa_ ,” Sveta smiled when Anna came out. She looked at her reflection again. She wasn’t quite the beauty Sveta has proclaimed her to be, but she looked nice, and most important of all, she looked like herself. A nicer version of herself.

“You should wear heels with that dress,” Sveta said, pulling another strand of hair free of the braid, then zipping up the dress the rest of the way up, where Anna couldn’t reach.

“I’ll fall down.”

The older woman laughed, “You need practice. Come back and I’ll teach you.”

Tom’s eyes lit up when he walked in, a smile brightening up the darkening room. Anna smiled in return. It was an oddly synchronized dance of hellos, goodbyes and “where’s your coat?” that ended with them leaving minutes after Tom had arrived, his suit jacket wrapped around her shoulders against the late-January weather. There was a limo waiting down the street. It was black and not very big, not as big as some she’d seen cruising down the streets before, and it was as alien to Anna as a spaceship. She wished for open country roads and a pair of bicycle as she got inside through the door Tom held open for her.

There were people. So many people. Screaming. Flashing. Talking. They all wanted him. They wanted to hear what he has to say, they wanted to know what he’s wearing, they wanted to know who she was. It was a mass of flashing lights and sparkling dresses, of high heels and dark tuxedos, of outfits that would have made her grandmother cringe. The soundtrack was the rise-and-fall sound of names being screamed from behind the fences. Masses of people holding cameras, posters, phones, all pointed at the people walking down the red carpet.

Anna stayed back with Luke, where it was marginally safer. Slightly less attention than walking by Tom’s side. He signed and posed for photos with the people at the sidelines, he spoke to men and women with microphones, looked into cameras. He talked and laughed with friends, costars, acquaintances.

It was a relief to get inside the building, away from all the cacophony of humanity outside. The noise level has dropped, there were substantially less people around. Or maybe they just spread out better. Once they got inside everything moved like clockwork, a well-oiled machine of ceremonies once again springing into action. Everyone knew their parts. Everyone but Anna. But she had Tom holding on to her hand, leading her through the crowd to the entrance doors to the hall, down the aisle to where their seats were.

It started, then it ended, and all she had to do was sit and make sure to smile if she spotted a camera pointed in their general direction. Tom seemed to do it with ease. Anna wished she could be at home. Or on the beach. Or sitting under a tree in the park. Or anywhere but in that room full of people who thought they were beautiful.

“That’s a cute dress.”

Anna turned towards the voice. It belonged to a blonde who stood tall on black heels, her cleavage showing above the fabric of a black dress. The flashing lights of the club where the after-party was taking place were making it hard to make out the features of the woman, but Anna recognized her nonetheless. She’d been in Tom’s apartment. Her black lacy bra had been on the back of a chair in his room.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Weren’t you wearing it for the ceremony, though?” it wasn’t so much the question itself as it was the tone that made Anna pause. The tone, and the fact that the lights flashing around them seemed to leave a space around the woman, leaving her in an aura of shadow. And she wasn’t the only one. Half of them were covered in various degrees of shadows. Anna knew the effect was only in her head, but it was too strong to be able to ignore.

“Yeah,” Anna mumbled. The woman smirked, picked up her drink, turned around and left. Anna watched her disappear, her anger levels rising to a degree she hardly ever experienced. She concentrated on breathing. Breathe in, breathe out. Let go. Breathe in, breathe out. Let go.

“What’s going on?” Tom asked, sliding a hand around Anna’s waist, holding a tumbler of whiskey in the other.

“Nothing,” Anna sighed, sipped from her own drink.

“…right.” His look said he knew that she was lying, but after a moment he shrugged it off. “Dance?”

“Maybe later.”

A few minutes, and he had disappeared back into the mass of supposedly important people dancing, drinking, mingling, partying. Anna watched them, a mass of shadows, lights and one beacon at the far end of the room. There were bright lights there, and somewhere, someone was probably looking in this direction, wondering about their own beacon of light that they were feeling. She wasn’t the only one. She couldn’t possibly be.

It was another light that drew her attention, once Anna realized Tom would not be returning too quickly. It wasn’t that he’s forgotten about her per-se. It was just that she wasn’t a part of this world he wanted her to enter that evening. These were his people, not hers. So she took her drink and walked out of the room, following the invisible trail of someone else.

They were in a room down the hall, sitting on cushions on the floor, on chairs, on the big double bed, leaning against walls. Clearly, they had all escaped the same party she has, Anna even recognized some faces, although she couldn’t remember the names that belonged to most of them. The trail she followed belonged to the man with the guitar who was sitting on the bed, leaning against the back wall. James. She knew his name. He was playing, accompanied by a blonde girl in an evening dress, awkwardly trying to both sit comfortably with the guitar, and make sure her legs were at least semi-decently covered up. Anna knew her name as well, although it took two and a half songs to remember it – Jen. They were all singing, some quietly, some a bit louder, some thumping the rhythm with hands on furniture, with feet against carpets.

With a smile and a nod towards an empty space at the foot of the bed, she’d been accepted.

They sang, one song after another, old ones that everyone knew, new ones that some didn’t, songs that were originals by James that some had known and some hadn’t. It was a strange mix of peace and quiet in the midst of massive activity. Faintly, the thumping of the bass from the main party was heard, despite the closed door. People came and went, joining in for a song or two before moving on to their next destination. Some people just stayed – the dark haired guy smoking out the window, the olive-skinned man sitting in one of the chairs and the girl with the ginger curls sitting on a cushion at his feet, the older man who was missing his son and seeing the shadow of him in the room, and James and Jen, who played.

The noise level went up substantially, then down again, when the door opened and Tom walked into the room. He nodded a greeting at the room and came to stand behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders and pulling her back until she was leaning against him. He tapped the rhythm of the playing song into her collarbone with her fingertips, and she knew he was smiling even if she couldn’t see his face.

With the next song, he pulled her up and wrapped her hands around his neck, swaying with her to the rhythm in the confined space between the bed and the nearest occupied chair.

“So what happened?” she was half-asleep on his chest in the car that was no longer a limo, barely coherent enough to understand the question, but once it registered, it brought her right back into awareness. Anna shifted and glanced up at him, then sighed. He wouldn’t let it go.

“She thinks she’s better than me.”

“Who?”

“The blonde. Your ex.”

Tom looked confused, then even more confused as he tried to connect her words with events of the evening, then finally he figured it out. “She’s not my ex. She’s just… someone. What’s she done?”

“She thinks she’s better than me. She thinks that because she has money and went to a good school and had a dress for the event and a dress for the party and each one of them was made by someone famous-“ Anna paused, took a breath, “She thinks she’s better than me.”

“Anna, she’s doesn’t-“

“She does,” Anna insisted.

“How do you know?”

“The way I know everything. The way I know she spent three months barely eating to fit into that fancy dress. The way I know she’s had a migraine all day and that her ankle hurts from the high heels,” another breath. Her escape to the room with music and light and nicer people has helped a lot to calm her down, to make her forget, but now it was all surging back up. Everything that the “nothing” she’d said to him earlier contained. Nothing was never nothing. “Why do they think that?” Anna asked. “Why do they think that money and more expensive education makes them better? Do their fancy schools teach them compassion? Does their money buy them kindness? I don’t get it.”

“You know it’s not the money,” Tom said, brushing stray hair from her eyes. His eyes were slightly bloodshot, his breath smelled of whiskey. He was tired and slightly drunk and this wasn’t the time for deep, meaningful conversations about the human condition. But they’ve had at least another ten minutes to kill until they got home. “It’s just a kind of people.”

“But it’s only the kind of people who have money,” she pointed out.

“No. They’re just the ones who express it,” he paused, ran a hand through his hair, “d’you know what I mean?”

Anna nodded.

“Good,” he smiled, placed a kiss at the top of her head. “Thank you for coming with me tonight.”

“Just this once,” she whispered. “Okay?”

“Okay.”


	9. September

Home, she’d learned, was sometimes a place you carried with you, sometimes a place you came back to and sometimes it was just a person. But what happens when you find home, but then it’s no longer yours? Knowing she wasn’t going to stay forever didn’t make the moment Anna had realized she needed to leave any less shocking. Any less painful. The pain of it took her by surprise. It was all in the eyes, she knew. And his sparkled when he looked at his new co-star. So she’d left him again, this time with a lump in her throat she really didn’t want to have there, with tears locked behind lids, with heavy limbs and a heavier heart – she’d left. And Tom, in a much similar condition – had let her go.

Homeless. She was homeless. Never before had she considered herself homeless, but she left and became homeless for a time, until a new home could be made, until she could re-learn the way of the world without him in it. A beacon in the distance and nothing else, once more.

She was sat facing his direction, somewhere to her left across the land and ocean, breathing in the crisp evening air of Northern Scotland, watching the water of River Ness dance against the shore as the sun set somewhere behind her back, painting the sky in brilliant shades of pink and orange. It was different every evening, the sunset, but equally, magically beautiful. So she’d spent her evenings on the grass, the rabbits running around her as if she’s not even there, watching the sky change colors as daylight disappeared. Once it was full dark, she headed back into the town, into the little pub on the street corner by the beach, where she’d taken up a space at the corner of the bar, listening to the music.

The guy with the guitar was her age, dark eyed, dark haired, and very good at what he did. Every night, he would play and sing, and every night she’d sit in the corner of the bar and listen, drawing from the music the heat she could no longer draw from a better source. It wasn’t home, but it was a place that let her in and let her stay, and home was slowly growing within her own self again.

“You come here every night and nobody knows your name,” he materialized at her side, a pint of beer in his hand, during his break.

“Anna,” she said.

“Anna,” he smiled, a dimple decorating his cheek as he did so. “What should I sing for you, Anna?”

“Something that reminds you of home.”

He blinked, taken aback for a moment, then smiled again, “sure.”

It was a somewhat melancholy tune that made her think of racing down a muddy track among the heather, of rain pelting on farmhouse windows, of the smell of wet wool, fresh grass, ocean spray. A country boy. Anna closed her eyes and concentrated, followed him to the place he called home.

And then, later that night, she’d allowed him to lead her to a small attic flat where he lived while he was away from home.

“You’re frozen,” he said, his hands wrapping around her fingers.

“Not for long,” Anna promised.

She didn’t stay the night. She had her own little attic flat, half the size of his, featuring a bed, a dresser, and a suitcase with her belongings. Her time with Tom resulted in _things_ , and, she found, it wasn’t so easy just leaving them all behind at once. One by one, she was slowly making her way towards the one backpack she could carry anywhere with her. But she couldn’t do it all at once. There were too many memories, and sometimes they were enough to warm her bones just enough to make it through the day or night.

It was hard to find the balance again, now that Tom wasn’t nearby. She couldn’t overdo things. She couldn’t drain herself completely. Days were spent in the town and around it, late evenings in the pub, and nights, more often than not, curled up in bed crying for all the things Anna could no longer afford to do. And, if she’d let herself, for the loss of Tom. It wasn’t so much as she was missing him, as it felt like he was missing from her – a phantom limb, hurting even though it’s no longer there.

Another night in the same pub, Ian had started singing a song that threw her back in time and straight into a room with people in fancy dress, who have escaped one party and were having their own – two guitars and singing along. And Tom, his hands around her, dancing in a confined space, humming into her neck. The impression of him was so strong that Anna thought if she’d reach out, he’d be there, she’d touch him.

She had to remind herself to breathe, swallow down the lump of air stuck in her throat and suck it into her lungs, then let it out. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Anna closed her eyes against the tears, swallowed them instead. None of that. And then, without really thinking, without really meaning, she reached into her small bag and took out one of the few things she still couldn’t rid herself of, and sent a message:

_Are you okay?_

The song ended and the air was lighter, it was easier to breathe. Anna put the phone away and smiled at Ian, willing him to sing something that would take her away into someplace nicer. With the phone back in the bag, the guitar strumming an entirely different tune, and the people around her occasionally humming along, she found herself in the mountains this time, racing atop a brown horse, wind blowing her hair in all directions, making her eyes water, making her feel as if she were flying.

Much better.

It wasn’t until halfway to morning, when she got back into her little room and took out the phone that everything got worse again.

 _No_.

Anna sat down on top of the covers, typed in three letters:

_Why?_

Waiting for a reply, she took a quick shower, changed into her sleeping shirt – the last one of his she’d still kept – and curled up under the covers. The silent beep would have woken her, had she managed to fall asleep.

_I dream of you. Crying in a tiny little room. Sleeping with a black-haired guy. Is that real?_

Anna stared at the message. How? Why?

Did it matter, how and why?

Of course it mattered.

_Yes._

The next message came in almost immediately.

_Why do you cry?_

Anna blinked, breathed, hanging on the brink between laughter and tears. Did he think her a machine without feelings? He knew better than that. Why shouldn’t she cry? How could she not?

_Phantom limb syndrome._

She fell asleep waiting for a message that didn’t come. It didn’t come during the night. It didn’t come the following day, as she walked through the halls of the one small hospital the area had. It didn’t come later when she was in the pub, or later still when she went straight home. It didn’t come sunset after sunset after sunset of sitting in the grass in the rain.

Then the phone rang. The sound was so alien at that point that it startled her, and it took Anna a moment to realize what was making the sound.

“Anna,” his voice on the other end, as if he wasn’t half the world away.

“Tom,” she automatically turned in his direction and knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that somewhere across the ocean, he was facing hers. She opened her mouth to say something else, but found she had no voice.

“I miss you,” a rush of breath, relief that the words were finally out.

“Liz…” Anna’s voice trailed off. She didn’t know quite what to say about Liz.

“Isn’t…” he paused, looked for the right words, gave up. “It’s over,” he said simply, “I’m sorry.”

“Oh,” she had vivid recollections of the way they looked at each other, the way the air stood at attention when they stood close, the way they blended together sometimes, if she wasn’t focusing. Over? That made no sense.

“Listen, tell me where you are,” Tom said. “Europe somewhere, right?”

“Yes. Scotland.”

A surprised chuckle, “Really? Do you like it?”

“Yeah,” that evening’s sunset was still bright in her mind, “the sunsets are pretty.”

“Can I come?” Tom asked.

It took a moment to get around the lump in her throat and speak, “If you want.”

“Don’t be like that,” he said. And then, when minutes passed with them just breathing at each other across the line, Tom took a deep breath and spoke again, “I’ll be there soon. Please don’t cry anymore.”


	10. October

“You have the stars on your skin,” she said, tracing her fingers gently on the skin of his chest, touching tiny birthmarks.

“Hmm…?” still mostly asleep, Tom’s head turned slightly in her direction. He didn’t open his eyes, though, nor did he make any other sound to indicate he’d been listening. In another moment, he was asleep again. Anna continued tracing constellations on his skin, putting them to memory. There were parts of him that she’d already learned, already knew – the way his head tilted when he was paying close attention, the scar on his forehead, the glint in his eye. And other things. The sound of his bare feet on wooden floors, his breathing in the night, the exact temperature his tea had to be before he actually enjoyed drinking it. There were so many things, and she learned all the time. Tonight, she was learning the way the brown spots on his skin formed constellations, studying them through the faint lamp-light that sneaked in through the window.

Tom’s hand fumbled through the air, caught her palm and pressed it flat against his skin. A mumbled groan could have passed for words, but Anna couldn’t tell what they were. She settled down, head on the pillow, hand still pressed against his chest, and watched his stubble glint in the faint light until she fell asleep.

Her dreams were a jumble of twisting streets, going this way and that, never getting anywhere, mixed with the rise-and-fall of an air-raid siren and the gasping breaths of a cat, bleeding in an alley. Everything was shaking. The streets, the cat, the siren. Anna woke with a start, a scream dying in the back of her mind, itching in the back of her throat. Tom has finally managed to shake her awake. His eyes had wrinkles around them, his forehead pinched, the lines between his eyebrows more distinct than usual. Anna took a deep breath and could tell she wasn’t the only one having nightmares.

“You’ve got shit dreams,” Tom said, flopping back on the mattress.

The air that left Anna’s nose almost qualified as a chuckle, “Tell me about it.”

“The siren was a nice touch, really brings the stress levels up.”

Anna turned sharply in his direction, staring. He couldn’t have. He evidently has. “How?”

He just shrugged, ran a hand across his forehead, brushing hair away, then down his chin and neck, scratching slightly. A car passing by on the street outside broke the silence of his non-answer. Another moment and it was gone, and the silence settled around them again. It covered them, a second blanket to cuddle underneath for warmth, tucked underneath their bodies and pulling them closer, rather than pushing them apart. Anna watched the rise and fall of Tom’s chest as he breathed, and so knew a heart-beat before he spoke and broke the silence – the breath he took gave him away.

“Come,” he said, pulling her closer and spooning behind her, “you can have some of mine.”

The chorus of birds singing their songs outside woke Anna some time later, to find herself alone in the bed, the room still in darkness. The birds were entirely out of harmony with Tom, whose quiet humming broke through when he turned off the water in the shower. She sighed, breakfast time. And then their car to the airport would arrive. Back to California. No wonder she’d had nightmares.

“You’re up,” Tom smiled as he stepped out of the bathroom, black cotton pants riding low, his chest still glistening with drying water. He was rubbing a small white towel on his head, drying the curls. His hair grew out a bit, with the stubble cleanly shaved, it made him look almost boyish.

“I’m up,” Anna confirmed, sitting up and brushing hair out of her face, sleep out of her eyes. “Coffee or tea?” she asked.

“Coffee,” Tom answered, “definitely coffee.”

Dawn changed into morning around them, the chorus of birds getting louder then settling down, as they drank coffee and had yesterday’s muffins with it. Chocolate for Tom, blueberry for Anna. She’d left half of hers in crumbles on the little plate, not feeling particularly hungry.

“It’ll be fine,” Tom said, finishing the last of his muffin. “Stop worrying.” His phone chimed once, twice. Tom picked it up and looked at the message. “That’s the car. You got your things?” his small suitcase and backpack were already standing by the door. Anna nodded, motioning towards her backpack. “Let’s go, then.”

He slung his backpack over one shoulder, hers over the other, and picked up the suitcase. Anna opened the door for him, then closed it behind them, handing him the keys. He tucked them into his pocket and reached his free hand back, caught hers, and led the way down the short hallway and to the elevator.

Anna stared out the little window as the plane took off, as they gained more and more elevation, watched water snaking quickly on the outside of the window as they gained more speed, and eventually crystallizing, turning into tiny shining frozen flakes, shimmering in the sunlight. She never grew tired of watching the world from above like this. Never grew tired of the rolling clouds underneath instead of above, of the horizon changing color as the day was born or fading, of the world growing small and almost unreal, but at times still entirely distinguishable miles and miles and miles away, below.

Beside her, Tom was pointedly not looking outside. He had a book held in one hand, while his other rested in Anna’s lap, holding on to her hand slightly tighter than was necessary. He didn’t particularly like flying. Anna traced patterns on the back of his hand with her thumb, slowly dissolving the stone in the pit of his stomach, absorbing it into her own, hardly even noticing the difference.

A while later, his voice shattered the world she’d been sucked into, “What are you reading?”

Anna didn’t look up right away, she finished the paragraph first, then marked the page with a finger and only then did she look up, “How Kvothe the Bloodless earned his title,” she said.

“Oh,” Tom said, tilting the book in her hand so that he could read the title on the cover. “Where’d you get this?”

“Bought it at the airport,” Tom’s own book was resting on the tray in front of him, his boarding pass sticking out from between the pages, marking where he’d stopped.

“And how did Kvothe the Bloodless earn his title then?” he asked, eyes twinkling.

“Drugs,” Anna said simply.

Tom chuckled, “Right.”

“You going to sleep?” Anna asked, nodding towards the noise-cancelling headphones he’d put on.

Tom nodded, “Wake me up for the food, alright?”

“Of course.”

Kvothe the Bloodless was in the midst of trying to slay a dragon when Anna put the book away and stared out the window again, the pressure in her ears, the fasten seat-belt sign and the little map on the monitor in front of her all indicating they were minutes away from touching down at LAX. She took a deep breath. It would all be fine. There will be no alleys. No cats. No knives.

But there will be Liz, joining Tom for the premiere Anna had no intensions of going to. It shouldn’t matter. She knew the constellations the decorated Tom’s skin, knew the golden flecks in his blue eyes, knew the stones in the pit of his stomach, knew his heart. And so it shouldn’t matter. But it did. Jealousy was an entirely new feeling for Anna, and she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.

Tom’s hand tightened almost painfully around her own. The plane shook upon impact, and the grip relaxed. A deep breath and he smiled at her, “It’ll be fine, stop worrying.”

They’ve arrived.


End file.
